Food and Healing: How What You Eat Determines Your Health, Your Well-Being, and the Quality of Your Life

This remains one of my favorite books on eating for health. Annemarie offers sensible, and do-able guidelines, not rules, and a lot of information to mull over. I go back to this book over, and over again. I also recommend her cookbooks. Healthy, delicious, easy to make dishes, with simple ingredients.

I just borrowed this book from a friend, and Colbin covers everything--there were several pages I xeroxed before returning it. It doesn't propose any specific philosophy, rather it evaluates the effects of different foods on the body. She incorporates Chinese and ayurvedic philosophy also and details macrobiotics. I am vegan, and I especially recommend it for vegetarians since it explains how to balance your diet, making sure you get enough calcium and the essential B12. Colbin emphasizes all-natural foods and listening to your body. I'm gonna buy a copy when I get back to the states. Enjoy!

Although I don't necessarily agree with everything Annemarie Colbin has to say about food & health (for example, I believe that certain immunizations are a critical part of one's health care and not unnecessary or harmful), "Food and Healing" is an excellent and thoughtful treatment of a complex subject. The title may erroneously give the impression that the book is just for those who are ill. In fact, the book has a lot to offer to anyone who is interested in learning more about nutrition, and how what we eat can make us feel better or worse. We know that caffeine can give you energy or make you nervous, and that a high-fat diet can cause heart disease; Colbin theorizes that other kinds of food, food ingredients and even methods of preparation affect the body in different but no less profound ways. Particularly intriguing are Colbin's musings on "food philosphy": e.g., multi-faceted comparisons of different diets; how different thinkers approach food in a different philosophical way; various ways to look at food choices and their effects on the body. I was impressed by the breadth of the sources Colbin cites (although occasionally one finds an outdated reference, like the ones to the now-debunked Tasaday "tribe") and how she weaves everything together into a coherent and readable book. What really won me over, however, was Colbin's insistence on taking a flexible approach to eating. Colbin emphasizes that no diet should remain static, and we need to choose different kinds of diets to reflect and address what is going on in our lives at different times. She is remarkably open-minded and tolerant of all points of view, allowing the reader to take away nuggets of wisdom from unlikely sources. If some of the opinions expressed seemed a bit too airy-fairy for me (e.g., auras, and her apparent rejection of the germ theory of disease transmission), even these sections were interesting and thought-provoking. Required reading for anyone who has "food issues," wants to improve her diet, has a chronic health problem, or works in the nutrition field.

If you missed Annemarie Colbin's fine book, Food and Healing, the first time around, it's back in a revised edition. First published in 1986, it rapidly became a classic exploration in detail of why and how we are what we eat. Reissued in 1996 by Ballantine with a new preface by the author, Food and Healing now incorporates the latest on low fat eating, findings on food combinations and new alternative medicine paths into what remains the Bible of the holistic view of food and health. Ms. Colbin's view is thoroughly common sensical. She recognizes the fact that we are each individuals, and that once we have digested the facts, theories and proposals in her book we must make decide on what eating choices are best for us. This is a thoughtful but not didactic book, solid and grounded in research, yet written with an entertaining touch. Rarely have we encountered a book that so well explains the nutritive quality of food, and its effects on body, mind and spirit. Don't miss it.Review by Meredith Sayles Hughes

A powerful, thought-provoking book. Ms. Colbin is extremely knowledgeable and readable. This is a great book for vegetarians and would be vegetarians who have dabbled in natural hygiene, macrobiotics and other "branches" and have trouble sorting through all the conflicting information and dogmas.